Mossack Fonseca worked with 33 individuals or companies who have been placed under sanctions by the US Treasury, including companies based in Iran, Zimbabwe and North Korea.
One had links to North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.
The information comes from the leak of 11m of the company's internal files.
Mossack Fonseca registers companies as offshore entities operated under its own name. This meant the identities of the real owners were hard to trace because they were kept out of public documents.
Some of the businesses were registered before international sanctions were imposed. But in several cases Mossack Fonseca continued to act as a proxy for them after they were blacklisted.
DCB Finance was established in 2006, with its owners and directors based in North Korea's capital Pyongyang. It was later put under sanctions by the US Treasury for raising funds for the North Korean regime and being linked to a bank helping to fund the regime's nuclear weapons programme.Image copyrightAFPImage captionPyongyang is believed to have used satellite launches to test long range missile technology
The leaked files reveal the owners of DCB Finance were a North Korean official, Kim Chol Sam and Nigel Cowie, a British banker who was also CEO of the sanctioned Daedong Credit Bank.
Mossack Fonseca appears to have overlooked that the owners and directors of the company were based in Pyongyang until it was contacted by the British Virgin Islands (BVI) authorities in 2010, inquiring about another company Mossack Fonseca had set up with directors in North Korea.
Mossack Fonseca resigned as agents for DCB Finance in September 2010.
Panama Papers - read more from BBC News
Image copyrightAFPImage captionLaw firm Mossack Fonseca is based in Panama City
Culled from BBC
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